20 min
35 min
60 min
Vap 2 · Vap 4.1 · Vap 4.2 · Vap N
12.5 / km²
2
0
163
−11% vs city
Counted from OpenStreetMap and Inside Airbnb (CC BY 4.0)
Staying in Giudecca
Giudecca is the long island facing the Zattere across a 300-metre canal. It is administratively part of Dorsoduro and practically a different place: a working island with a boatyard, social housing, a couple of ordinary bars, the Redentore church, and at the western tip the Molino Stucky, a converted flour mill that is now the biggest hotel in the city.
What you buy here is space and the view. Rooms are larger and cheaper than the equivalent across the water, and from the fondamenta you look at the entire Venetian waterfront, which is a thing the waterfront itself cannot do. There are no day-trippers at all.
What you pay is the boat. Every trip out and back is a vaporetto with a wait at each end, four minutes of crossing bracketed by up to twenty minutes of standing about. Line N covers the night, so you will get home, but you will get home slowly, and almost nothing on the island is open late, so dinner usually means crossing back. With luggage it means a boat at both ends of the journey. Book it for a quiet second visit, not a first one.
What works
- Rooms are larger and cheaper than the same standard across the canal in Dorsoduro.
- Lines 2, 4.1 and 4.2 cross to Zattere in about four minutes, and line N runs through the night.
- You look at the whole Venetian waterfront, which is a view the waterfront itself does not get.
- Actual residents, no day-tripper flow, and the quietest nights in the historic city.
What does not
- You cannot walk to Venice at all. The 20 minutes to San Marco is a boat plus two waits, not a walk.
- Miss a boat and you wait 20 minutes on an unlit fondamenta, longer after midnight.
- Almost nothing opens late on the island, so dinner usually means crossing back and returning.
- Arriving and leaving means a vaporetto with luggage at both ends of the trip.
The Giudecca island can be reached only by vaporetto lines 2, 4.1, 4.2, 8 and N.